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German Painting Today

Sunday, January 15, 1956Sunday, February 12, 1956

Guests at the Members' Opening for German Painting Today on January 15, 1956. Image courtesy of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Digital Assets Collection and Archives.

1905 Building

Organized by the Martha Jackson Gallery, German Painting Today featured the work of six contemporary German painters: Willi Baumeister, Rolf Cavel, Hans Jaenisch, Heinz Trökes, Theodor Werner, and Fritz Winter. But as the introduction to the exhibition catalogue explained, “The title German Painting Today is not meant to be misleading. In Germany as in all countries there is a large body of work that falls readily into the dictionary definition of ‘painting.’ By Today’s Painting is meant painting which has been done in the past decade which has not been done before (today’s being not yesterday’s nor day before yesterday’s and so forth, but explicitly today’s) and therefore the new and thus creative work, not the imitative.”

This exhibition traveled to the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery (October 1–November 15, 1955); Institute of Contemporary Art in Washington, DC (March 1–April 15, 1956); Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio (May 15–June 30, 1956); and the Baltimore Museum of Art (September 15–November 1, 1956).